CHAPTER XXXIV

Were a purblind generation convinced of the invaluable blessings of sorrow, trouble would be robbed of its sting. Ignorance and fear make the unenlightened bemoan their burdens, or shirk bearing them, as they should be borne, with the strength of hope. Chastening is the gift of the eternal love, and those happy few who know this submit with joy to the improving rod. But worrying is not submission, nor is grumbling a recognition of curative effects. To be manful, to be daring, to be so entirely wise from the learning of the lesson as to extract the sweet from the bitter, thus do we prove ourselves worthy of that suffering which God bestows in mercy and in pity. Troubles, if rightly understood, deepen the most shallow character, purify the most soiled soul. They begin in woe but they end in joy. When the lesson is learned, then comes the holiday--or more precisely, the holy-day--of peace and gladness.

Jim, in his simple way, understood that out of apparent evil great good had come to himself and Leah. Never before had they understood each other so well; never before had they forgathered with less friction. The Duke's reformation was as genuine as his embryonic soul was capable of making it. He felt desperately ashamed of himself at the communion table, and shame of self, provided the physical ego be not considered, is the beginning of repentance, which leads to hope, which brings pardon and solace to the uneasy, sinful heart. Jim did not become a saint by any manner of means, but he tried by fits and starts to be a better man, and so, with true though faltering zeal, advanced towards the light. And it was much gained that so once self-satisfied a man should acknowledge himself to be at all in need of improvement. The recalled code of schoolboy honour helped him to amend the less drastic rules of the society man. Could Jim have only gone still farther back, and remembered helpful nursery prayers and childish faith, he might have seen even more clearly how to utilise his mistakes. But he was yet a spirit in embryo, and his receptive powers were not great.

Leah did not keep pace with her husband on the upward path. When the danger was brought to naught, and her nerves became more normal, she forgot everything with the alacrity of a hardened heart. The wind of the Spirit had but troubled the surface of her nature; its depths remained undisturbed. Within a fortnight her dear devil of egotism returned, and she tore out of her book of life the disagreeable page, which she declined to read for the second time. Certainly she retained so much grace and memory as not to laugh at Jim's efforts to be good, and she was less ready than of yore to see and comment upon his obvious failings. But she secretly wondered that he should try to be pious, when there was no worldly advantage to be gained by such dullness. Besides, Jim, with the zeal of the newly converted, began to preach in a stammering, shamefaced way about the duties they owed to themselves in particular and to society at large. He even looked up _Noblesse oblige_ at the tail-end of the dictionary, and quoted the platitude to Leah. On that occasion she had laughed consumedly; but, truth to say, Jim's sermons bored her immensely. She preferred those of Lionel, who, as a professional guide to glory, knew his business, whereas poor dear Jim was hopelessly muddled.

Therefore, while the Duke laboriously tried to be good, and succeeded but doubtfully, Leah was coquetting deliriously with the world, the flesh, and the many agreeable devils of her acquaintance. She improved her former extravagances into something worse, and revenged herself for being agreeable to Jim by letting both friends and enemies have the full benefit of her witty, cruel tongue. The few who did not come under its lash were in ecstasies at her sparkling conversation, and the many who did made themselves pronouncedly pleasant out of mortal fear. Leah danced and sang through the season with the insolent glee of a woman who knows her position to be unassailable. Jim wondered at her short memory, and tried to refresh it; but that she would not endure, and declined even to hear the name of Demetrius. Moreover, as M. Aksakoff had been translated to Copenhagen, there was no need to smooth matters over between him and the Duke. Everything was safe, everything was ripping, and she felt that her latest _pas de seul_ was being executed on firm ground. She had skipped in the very nick of time from that dangerous old mount which had erupted so feebly.

And no one could say but what she did her best to be amiable. Late in the season she met and congratulated Mr. and Mrs. Askew; she told Lady Richardson how she admired her courage--underlined--in marrying that handsome pauper, Captain Lake; and forgivingly did she condole with Mrs. Penworthy, when the unexpected death of Freddy, from overwork, left that evergreen hack a widow whom no admirer wished to marry. Lady Canvey was most tenderly considered, and Wallace, the globe-trotting cynic, on Leah's introduction, amused the stay-at-home old lady by special command. The sedate Hengists thought even more of the Duchess than they had done of Lady Jim, and she was often asked to bore herself in their protective company. She gave Sir Billy Richardson a smiling time at one of the ducal seats, and invited Joan Kaimes to Curzon Street for a week of shopping and frivolity. Also bazaars and charity concerts, and meetings about the unemployed aristocracy, took up her attention. The fashionable congregation of an exclusive church beheld her regularly in its midst, and heard the audible admission that she was a miserable sinner--a most touching confession for a truly good Duchess to make. Then she befriended a bishop, who was not too straight-laced, and induced him to preach a scientific sermon in Lionel's church, of which Lionel, very nastily, did not approve. Oh, it was a merry time, when the grapes were ripe and the first-fruits of her ducal harvest were being gathered in. The Duchess of Pentland won golden opinions even from the censorious. Things could not have been better managed by the discarded fetish, and Leah admitted that in this respectable orgy the birthday of her life had come.

During this meteoric career it surprised every one that she should choose to retire suddenly. Fashion clamoured at her closed doors; society journals wondered and lamented; individual friends expressed themselves puzzled; and in print and conversation the freak of a Duchess who chose to disappear was freely discussed. It was as though the noonday sun should set unexpectedly. Leah's radiant orb had blazed triumphantly for a few months, paling the lesser stars of society, and then--had vanished. The Duke, when applied to for an explanation, stated that she had gone abroad, because her health was--hum--hum--hum. She crossed the Channel alone, too, which looked odd. People began to talk and to invent reasons to explain the inexplicable. But not even the most daring hinted at a connubial disagreement. Jim would have stopped any such rumour at once with high words. Not that it could arise, seeing that he thanked God publicly every Sunday for possessing a wife whose price was far above rubies. But whatever had happened, whatever might be the reason, it was indisputable that the beautiful and wealthy and clever and popular Duchess of Pentland had retired from the world in her heyday of social success.

Lionel was the first to hear of her when she returned unexpectedly to Firmingham, after a month's sojourn on the Continent. One day in the chilly grey autumn weather he received a note asking him to call at four o'clock, and went unthinkingly to pass through what he afterwards remembered as the most painful hour of his life. He fancied, when setting out, that Leah merely wished to see him about the Duke. It might be that Jim, with the Old Adam leaven still working within, had broken out again, and that Lionel was summoned to call the sinner a second time to repentance. But the Duke, as he gathered from old Colley, was vegetating at Hengist Castle. It was impossible that the Old Adam could emerge from his penitential cell in so respectable and moral a neighbourhood.

Leah received her cousin in the sitting-room of her Lady Jim days, where they had twice talked seriously. Later on it appeared that she had a special reason for selecting an apartment sanctified by the vicar's endeavour to improve her into a moderately presentable angel. It was a charming and tastefully decorated room, and the Duchess was as tastefully decorated and as charming as her surroundings. She sat in a deep chair by a brisk fire, dressed with that perfect choice of colour and material which always distinguished her. The delicate blue of her frock, and a selection of certain filigree silver ornaments, matched marvellously with her splendid red hair and sapphire eyes. Lionel noted an unusual pallor, but thought that he had never seen, her look more lovely. Apparently she had been reading, for she dropped her handkerchief over an open book on the small table at her elbow when she rose to shake hands. He mechanically wondered at the trivial action, and learned its significance later.

"So very kind of you to come, Lionel," said the Duchess, pressing his hand cordially. "I know how busy you are with your parishioners."

"You are one of them," smiled the clergyman.

"At odd moments, certainly; but we globe-trot for our places of worship nowadays. Sit down"; she indicated a convenient chair opposite her own. "Now tell me the news of your small world. Is Joan quite well?"

"Could not be better, considering the circumstances."

"I am so glad; when do you expect the happy event?"

"In a month, please God."

Leah looked pensively into the fire. "I hope it will be a boy."

"I shall be more than content with a girl. Why a boy particularly?"

"Why not, when an heir is so important? You succeed Jim, and a new Marquis of Frith----"

"My dear Duchess, you and the Duke are young. There is little chance of my succeeding. I may be congratulating you some day."

"No," cried Leah, almost fiercely; "such a thing can never be, thank God."

Lionel stared. "Why 'thank God'?"

"Oh--er--I hardly know; of course, I should hate to be pestered with children. The nursery is an obsolete institution here, and will remain so, unless"--she hesitated--"unless Jim marries again."

"Duchess!"

"Why not Leah?"

"If it will please you. But why talk of Jim's marrying again, when you are in the best of health and spirits?"

She shrugged indifferently. "One never knows, I might go first."

"I sincerely trust not."

"Does that imply that you wish me to be a real widow, after posing as a sham one?"

"Of course not; but you talk so strangely."

"And so honestly. Remember, I have always paid you the compliment of being plain even to rudeness."

Lionel tried to read her face, but in vain, and could not arrive at the meaning of her apparently aimless conversation. The slanting rays of sunset made a radiant glory round her as she half sat, half reclined in the chair, and her beauty could bear even that merciless test. Youth, health, money, charm, loveliness--with these desirable blessings at her command, what else could she want?

"I do not quite understand," said the perplexed man.

"Understand what?" she asked absently; then became more alive to his question. "Oh, my chatter. You will, before we part. I am no sphinx to propose riddles."

"Every woman is a sphinx."

"Without a secret; that is why you men find us so difficult to comprehend."

"I confess to the difficulty at this moment."

"What a complex mind I must have! Yet I am a very ordinary butterfly of fashion; something with wings, at all events, though not entirely an angel."

Her visitor laughed. "Am I to pay you a compliment, or rebuke you for frivolity?"

"You can do both or either; the sweet first will counterbalance the bitter last. But I sicken of compliments."

"Even when genuine?"

"They never are. Men say things they don't mean to women out of traditional reverence for the exploded idea of the weaker vessel. When you meet a child your first thought is to give it sweets; when you talk with us the same thought is translated into polite lies. And we never believe you--never," Leah assured him. "Plain or beautiful, vain or humble, we price the words directly. In no case have I found them to be of value."

"You make us out to be fools."

"One must be truthful at times. Of course, I always except you, Lionel, as you are more man than parson."

"Cannot I be both?"

"Oh, yes, when miracles occur. Lately I heard of a parson who laboured solitary and freezing amongst the snows of Labrador for a poor eighty pounds a year. He was emphatically a man."

"And a parson," supplemented the vicar; "so, you see, miracles do occur."

A warm colour crept into Leah's cheeks, and she looked piercingly at her companion. "Do they? Nowadays, I mean. I am not using a mere phrase, believe me. Honestly now, could those Gospel miracles occur in this twentieth century?"

Lionel mused, and considered a careful reply. "Our Master was given the Spirit without measure as a man because He was the Son of the Most High; by that wisdom did He work His marvels. But the Apostles, in His power, also prevailed over the apparently natural, showing signs and wonders to the glory of the Risen Lord and His Father. 'With faith ye can do all things,' said the blessed Jesus Himself. Yes, Leah, I reverently believe that with purity, faith, and a humble trust in the Father by the merits of the Son, and by the power of the Holy Ghost, miracles could take place to-day."

"Then why don't they?" she asked abruptly.

The vicar, sighing, dropped into the high-pitched sing-song of the pulpit. "A faithless and perverse generation----"

"A scientific generation, you mean. I don't believe--I can't believe--and I won't believe. Prove the power of your Master. You have faith; you are good; you----"

"No, no! You go too fast. I assuredly try to be good, but I am sadly wanting in many ways. I have faith, but how weak, how faltering. Who am I, to claim that the Lord should select me to reveal His strength unto men? I can work no miracle, Leah. Would to God that I could, if only to convince you!"

"Would to God that you could!" she echoed with something like a groan, and the faint flush disappeared, like the dying out of a hope.

"Why do you, a sceptic, ask about these things?"

Leah, possessed by the spirit of the perverse, laughed maliciously. "Jim is trying to be good; why should not I try also, since a wife is bound to follow her husband, according to St. Paul, who by the way was a bachelor? But," her mood shifted, "Jim has a tin-pot sort of faith which is better than nothing. I have not, and so, like your unbelieving Jews, require a sign."

Lionel became professionally interested, descrying intimations of a changed heart. "I believe that you will yet find the Kingdom," he said hopefully.

"Don't you make any such mistake," she retorted. "I have not yet set out to find it, and never will, unless I see some of those wonders about which you talk so glibly."

"But, believe me----"

"I do, though not to the extent of Bible magic. You hypnotise yourself into crediting the impossible. I wish you could hypnotise me. Oh, I wish--I wish--I wish!" she ended passionately.

"Faith is not hypnotism," argued Lionel; the word grated on his ear.

"It is--it is--it is!" Leah was vehement in her denial. "Science can explain everything. Why do you come here to prate of miracles, when you know in your own heart that such things never were and never can be?"

"They were and they can be and they will be, while Christ reigneth," asserted the vicar, firmly; "nothing is impossible to God."

"Then call upon Him, and work your marvel."

"I am not worthy."

"You are not able, rather," and she taunted him as did Elijah the priests of Baal, their god.

Kaimes wondered at her restless moods, and wondered still more when she abruptly left the serious subject they were discussing--and on her own initiative--to talk most frivolously.

"I have heard you preach," went on this weathercock, "and I am no more to be persuaded than was Agrippa. You and your shadows"--she whiffed these away. "Pouf! Let us talk of real things"; and a toss of her head dismissed the spiritual for the purely temporal. "I had such a ripping time this season," rattled on the nature set upon pomps and vanities.

"Leah, Leah! How can you?"

"Change so rapidly? Oh, my good man, I am a twirl-ma-gee woman, ever seeking variety. Religious conversation is neither amusing nor convincing. It's much more fun to talk of one's friends and abuse their failings."

"I decline to join in," said Lionel, dryly, and feeling nonplussed.

"Because you have no sense of humour. What a dull time of it Joan must have, poor child!"

"She does not complain," he objected stiffly.

"Oh, Lord, what is the use of complaining! I never whimper about Jim, though his goodness is even duller than his badness. 'I have tried George drunk, I have tried George sober'"--she was quoting an epigram of Charles II.--"'and there is nothing in George.'"

"You are unnecessarily personal," rebuked Kaimes, annoyed.

"That's right. Tramp on your little corns and you howl."

He intimated that he desired to leave. "My time is valuable."

"Oh, I know yon are a millionaire of seconds and hours. How disagreeable you are, when I want to be amused!"

"You have just informed me that I am dull," he reminded her pointedly.

"So you are; all honest men are dull. Why, I don't know, unless it is that honesty and wit match as ill as beauty and brains. Now don't look at your watch again. I have something to tell you that will make your clerical hair stand on end."

What could one do with such a whirlwind woman? The vicar replaced his watch and shrugged resignedly. She was what she had always been, freakish and uncertain; but on this occasion more so than usual. An April lady, whimsical and irresponsible, decidedly rude, and aggravatingly amusing. But Kaimes instinctively felt that at the back of these volleying drifts of smalltalk lurked something serious, which she feared to handle. Hoping that in time it might be manifested to his intelligence, he waited patiently, while Leah scrambled on verbosely in her gabble of nothings.

"You need a London month to pull you together. Dull country, dull man; dull man, awful bore. Get a parish in the West End; you'll have howling larks converting Dives and Jezebel of the drawing-room."

"I do not look upon conversion as a lark."

"I do, especially with Jim. Oh, Lord, to think that he of all people should turn goody-goody. You are pleased, of course; the sight of the lost black sheep trotting home to fodder to the fold is----"

"I really cannot listen to this talk," said Lionel, rising quickly.

"Yes, you can. I'll shock you more before I've done."

Kaimes resumed his seat blankly. "But your reason?"

Leah jumped up as her visitor sat down, and addressed nothing in particular.

"He asks for reason, and from a woman," she exclaimed. "So like that lame Lord Esbrook; he always asks what he should not and what he is never likely to get."

"Reason from women?"

"And from men, who have still less to spare. But that's his way. Have you met Lord Esbrook? Such a funny walk as he has. Dot and carry one--wooden leg, you know; dot and carry one--just like this only much worse"; and Leah limped the length of the room, mimicking an extraordinary gait so cleverly that Lionel laughed openly.

"Though you shouldn't mock at people's infirmities," he coughed.

"Why not? Esbrook's a holy show, and with the spite of the cripple, he spares no one's feelings. He's the cracked black pot snarling at the kettles he can never hope to be, with his dot and carry one, dot and carry one"; and back she came swinging and grunting with provoking cleverness.

In her gyrations--it seemed from her imitations that Lord Esbrook gyrated--she overturned the table upon which rested the covered book. Leah pounced to pick up the volume, as did Kaimes, out of courtesy. When he had set the table on its legs he could scarcely refrain from glancing casually at the book. It's exterior was familiar.

"The Bible!" exclaimed an amazed man.

Leah flung herself into the chair, laughing noisily. "Oh, what a face!" she mocked, pointing a jeering finger. "Look at yourself, do."

"Were--you--reading the Bible?" asked the vicar, too astonished to note the poor attempt she made to force humour.

"Why not?" said she, defiantly, but with flushes and quick breaths.

"You only mock."

"The opportunity is so alluring," was her reply. "There's such an awful lot of rot in that history of the Jews. And hundreds of impossibilities. Here!" She seized the Bible and rapidly swept the pages. "What was I reading when you entered?" The thin leaves flew and flickered beneath her fingers. "Oh yes! Something quite too absurd in Matthew."

"St. Matthew."

"Mister St. Matthew, if you will. There"; she presented the book; "you read so beautifully--really you do, without flattery."

"I will not read for you to mock."

Her face flashed into crude anger. "Read," she commanded harshly.

The vicar would have declined again, but that his eye fell on the verses she had indicated. A memory of their earlier conversation, coupled with her unnecessary vehemence, made him obey without further hesitation. It might be that here was the key to the problem of her jerky speech. His mellow voice rose like the music of a solemn bell, and the glorious words rolled majestically through the room.

"_When He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed_."

"And immediately his leprosy was cleansed," breathed the Duchess, gripping the arms of her chair to lean forward. "Why not 'her' leprosy?"

Lionel laid down the sacred volume. "It was a man who came to ask mercy of our Lord," said he, obtusely.

Leah threw herself back in the chair with the pettish cry of a misunderstood child. "Oh, you fool!"

Something in her voice startled him; yet he was far from gathering her meaning. "What is it?" he demanded, entirely bewildered.

There was no light in her eyes now; from luminous sapphires they had become pebbles, dull orbs of lapis-lazuli. When she spoke her voice creaked and wheezed "If your Master lived to-day, I would go to Palestine!" she said, looking very directly at him.

"What on earth for?" he asked blankly.

"Can you not understand?"

Her look was that of Medusa, and flickering lights came and went in her half-lifeless eyes. Their glare, rather than the toneless notes of her voice, made him faintly understand. The chosen passage out of St. Matthew, taken in conjunction with her earlier chatter of miracles, and her late reference to Palestine, engendered in his brain a horrible, a terrible, an impossible thought. And yet----

"What are you talking about?" he asked harshly.

The cry of a soul on fire broke on his ears. "You brute, when I suffer so! Does it need words?"

"Does what need words?"

She dashed her hand on the open page of the Bible. "This--this!"

"Augh!" He rose and sat down, with cold hands and a white face. The meaning of what she meant crashed like the blow of a bludgeon, and his brain spun to the shock "Leah!" he heard himself say, in a far-away voice like a telephone whisper. Then he stopped to stare at the quiet woman who sat upright, with rigid features and tightly clasped hands. "Leah," he muttered again, and some indefinable feeling made his hair crisp at the roots.

"Yes!" That was all she said, and her lips hardly moved in the saying.

Kaimes looked aimlessly round the room, and noted the pattern of the window-curtains. Only the whistling of the coals, spouting smoke and jetting flame, broke the stillness. His eyes returned to her face, fair and stainless. "Impos--s--sible!" he jerked, his voice entirely beyond control. "Im----" then his nerves vibrated and his skin crept.

"Three doctors in London, five doctors abroad, assured me that it is not impossible--unfortunately."

They were like two pale ghosts sitting in the shadows. Said one ghost to the other: "But have you--are you a----?" His tongue refused to form either terrible word.

Leah unexpectedly flung up her arms with a scream, then brought two shaking hands across her mouth to stifle that wild note of human pain. Right and left, up and down, did she look, as though to be certain that no one was within earshot but the vicar. "It will never do to let the servants hear," said the rapid action. Lionel's benumbed brain could not yet take in wholly the appalling truth--if truth it was. The leper dropped her hands and looked at him heavily.

"You lying devil," said Leah, slowly.

"What? what? what?" babbled Kaimes, incoherently.

She groaned and rocked with hands palm to palm between her knee. "I will, be thou clean; I will, be thou clean." Over and over again did she moan the words, till they bored into the listener's brain.

"God have mercy!" murmured the man, trying to be a man. The creeping paralysis of the horror almost struck him dumb. But he managed by a violent effort to wet his lips with a stiff tongue, and made it form certain words: "Are you sure of this?"

"Three doctors," went on the Duchess, rocking and droning as Demetrius did aforetime--"three doctors, five doctors, eight doctors in all. They said the same thing--ugh!--such a beastly thing! It was the truth, though. Doctors never lie like parsons. And that Book with its falsehoods--that----" She lunged forward without rising, and grabbing the Bible pitched it into the fire. Lionel snatched it from the flames; Leah struck it from his hands; and then ensued a silent struggle, uncanny, savage, in which some leaves were torn. All at once she relaxed her grip and lay back crying quietly. "It's a shame, a shame!" she wept softly; "just when everything was going on so well. And it can't be cured; all the money in the world can't cure me. I must die--in bits"; her voice soared shrilly, and she crouched, as though being beaten. "Ugh! That kiss, that beastly kiss!"

"Leah, how did you get this disease?"

The woman took no notice, but sprang up, as though moved by springs, flinging wide her arms, and looking upward in wild rebellion. "I won't die--I won't. I refuse to give in--I refuse"; she tore up and down the room, speaking in angry undertones, as one always mindful of possible listeners. "I have always had my own way!" was her whispered argument--"always--always; why can't I have it now? There can be nothing up there; no, no--there can't be. If He does exist He would not have let me go so long on my own. I am strong--I have never met any one stronger. I must win--I have always won. I will win!" her voice rose tyrannically. "I am myself; who can be stronger than myself? And yet this thing"--a strong shudder shook her into weakness--"this vile--vile---- Ugh! ugh! I believe there must be Something. Can you tell me, you--you who assume to know the secrets of the stars?"

She lurched forward in a frenzy of deadly fear, cannoned against Lionel, and dragged him down into his chair, clasping his knees, and knocking her forehead against them. "Where is your Master?" she whimpered. "Tell Him I'm sorry--really I am sorry. He may cure me then, as He cured that man long ago. Gentle Jesus--the children call Him so; He can't be cruel to me--to me. He can't be cruel to any one, so they say--ah, they say, they say; but how do I know? It's not true, it isn't true, and yet if it was--if it---- Lionel----" She broke off with the squall of a terrified child, hiding her eyes pitifully. "I'll be good--I'll be good, if only--only He will do this! It's a little thing--oh, a very little thing. And you said that He could--that He, your Master, I mean. Oh! oh! oh!" With sobbing breath she unwound her arms and fell back beating the carpet with open palms. Murmurings went rhythmically with the padding sound. "I want to be clean; I want to be clean; I want to be clean."

Kaimes tried to lift her. "Let me summon help."

With a bound she was on her feet, pushing him back. "Do that and I kill you," she panted, clenching her hands and facing him furiously. "No one knows but these doctors--yes, and Katinka, and that fiend Demetrius. Strange also. If I had Strange here"-- she hammered with closed fists on the vicar's shoulders--"I would cut him into bits; I would blind him somehow; I would--I would--oh, what would I not do? Why couldn't he leave that infected beast to die in Siberia? Oh, the--the--the----" She poured forth a torrent of words, which made the listener grow hot and cold with shame. Then again she collapsed as the chill of a deadly fear struck at her heart. "I don't want to die--I don't want to die!" and against the wall she rocked with arms held crosswise over her eyes, swinging, ever swinging.

The scene was like a nightmare; but by this time Lionel had the grip of his emotions. "Leah," he said firmly, and advancing close to the writhing creature, "you must tell your husband; you must----"

Out came her arms with a circular swing, and struck him fair across the eyes. "Jim doesn't know; Jim must never know."

He was almost blinded, but persisted. "Leah, something must be done."

Her voice sank, and with it her rage. "Something must be done," said she, faintly--"something shall be done, and--soon."

"What do you mean?" he asked, half under his breath, and half catching at her intention.

She took no notice. "Sit down, please!" said Leah, quietly, and Kaimes obeyed, since to summon assistance would only be to precipitate a still more dreadful scene. The Duchess looked into the mirror and arranged her hair; also she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, and smoothed her wrist-cuffs. When she did speak it was in the smooth voice of a society hostess asking a visitor if he took sugar in his tea. "I have made a fool of myself, Lionel. But you must admit that I am rather severely tried just now."

"Oh, you poor soul!" His tone and look were pitiful.

"Reserve your sympathy till you hear what I have to say. But first tell me honestly, can Christ cure me?"

"Yes--if it is His Will."

"Then let Him."

"You must have Faith."

"Faith in what?"

"In His power and Will to heal."

"How can I believe, when I do not believe?"

"He died for you on the Cross."

"He did not. That was purely a political matter because the Jews feared the Romans. I have read Strauss; I have read Renan; the four Gospels also: you can't puzzle me. He was a good man, a very good man--quite a saint, if you will. But--the Son of God?" She shook her head with a hard frown of disbelief.

Lionel was at his wit's end. "Then you cannot be cured?"

"No"; she looked at him steadily, an awful smile curving the corners of her mouth. "I thought you would fail me at the last."

"But how can I----?"

"You can't, so there's no more to be said." She sat down with a little sigh. "Dear me, how very hot this room is! Would you mind opening the window?"

Kaimes did not move. "Leah, go to bed, and let me send for one of those doctors you consulted."

"Useless! useless!" She waved him aside calmly. "They have spoken. I know the worst; I am prepared to face the worst. Are you? Hold your tongue," she added peremptorily, as he opened his mouth. "Listen!"

From beginning to end did she relate the whole fraud--the sham death, the stolen money, the betrayal, and the punishment of the kiss. Her voice was perfectly calm, her posture easy, and her self-control admirable. The listener grew white and red, became nervous and angry, quivered with disgust, recoiled with loathing, as she unfolded the brutal tale of her sin and treachery. Leah spared him no detail, however painful; she even made herself out to be worse than she really was--if that were possible. From the buying of Demetrius by that butterfly kiss in the picture-gallery, to the revenge of Demetrius in that stuffy cabin, when she struggled in the arms of one who had been what she now was, she related the whole without a blush, without a tremor, in a quiet, level voice, unmoved, and utterly shameless. The horror of her position seemed to remove her from the region of human emotions and morals. It was the unveiling of original evil.

Lionel did not interrupt, but closed his eyes with a sick feeling as she drew to the end.

"I first noticed that something was wrong when my hands burned as I washed them. I thought nothing of it at the time; but the feeling became so painful that I saw my doctor. He said--well, you can guess what he said. I consulted another, and another: the same diagnosis. I went abroad, but the doctors in Germany and France told me the same thing. I knew it was true. I felt in my heart it was true. Ugh!" She paused. "There is no cure--none, none." Then she finished, with a nervous titter, "Pleasant for me, isn't it?"

"Don't!" gasped the vicar, leaning his head on his hand, and much too qualmish to speak.

"Oh, you needn't look like that. I have to suffer, not you. I kept wondering how I got the beastly thing, and although I fancied it might be that kiss, I could not be quite sure. Katinka enlightened me--she was always a good-natured girl. After the death of that little reptile, she returned to England and watched me. Seeing that I went to doctors--she must have watched very closely--and then abroad, she wrote a letter--such a nasty, spiteful letter. But I always thought Katinka was a cat. Would you like to----?"

"No, no; I have heard enough."

"And you call yourself a man--pooh! You must hear. I learned from the letter that Demetrius contracted the--the--well, what he suffered from, amongst the natives of Kamchatka. He intended first to show me up; but when that horrid girl told him how she had hurt my mouth, he knew that by a kiss he could--ahr-r-r! He was a doctor, you see, and the skin being broken, it was easy for him, knowing what he did, to do what he wanted--the brute! That was why he kissed so hard, and----"

"Stop! stop!"

"It is beastly, isn't it? That's all, I think."

She was examining her finger-nails when next Lionel stole a glance at her. He scarcely knew what to say. Her treachery and the result of her treachery were both abominable. That a beautiful woman, gently born and bred, should sin so vilely seemed incredible. For beautiful she was, sitting there calmly under the uplifted sword of Azrael, the Angel of Death; and vile she confessed herself to be. Yet he could hardly accept either the physical degradation or the moral turpitude.

"You may be mistaken, after all," he stammered vaguely.

"Because I am not an object," she replied, with a shrug. "How like a child you are to require proof! I don't intend to become an object, I can tell you."

"But if there is no cure----"

"There is another way. Of course, it is disagreeable, but what is one to do in such straits?"

The vicar guessed her meaning, and violently threw off the weakness with which her story had infected his manhood. "I forbid you to heap crime upon crime," said he, firmly and insistently.

"I shall do what I like. Do not dictate to me, if you please."

"But God----"

"I don't believe in God."

"You do; you must. Does not this shameful punishment which has overtaken you in the hour of triumph declare the anger of a great and terrible God."

"No!" Her expression was mulish.

"Woman! woman! Kneel and ask for mercy."

"I won't ask for mercy when I'm being treated so badly. Never! never! Just when things were going so smoothly, too; the money coming in by the bushel, and Demetrius out of the way. I call it a shame; it's mean, spiteful, cruel. I intended to have such a jolly time, and now--now----" Her voice faltered and broke.

She swung with a groan to one side of the chair, hiding her face and breathing heavily. That deadly fear of the inevitable would grip her, do what she would.

"Leah"--Kaimes' voice shook a trifle--"God is very good to you."

Her eyes stared at him bleakly. "Very good?"

"We are put into this world, not for the pampering of the flesh, but that we may learn through trouble how to become more spiritual. Our souls are of God, and to God they must return, rising through much tribulation to His necessary perfection. Sorrows are sent for the flesh to bear; not as punishments, but as lessons to be learned. Of our vices, says St. Augustine, we can frame a ladder to ascend heavenward, if we but tread them beneath our feet. This you have never known."

"And I do not know it now."

"From your dreadful trouble will come the knowledge; in this way alone can humility come. God, out of loving pity for your unbending pride, which prevents the Holy Spirit from entering your heart, has beaten you to your knees. On your knees, then, ask for mercy, for light, for purification of your unclean soul. God's staff, which He gives to all in life's pilgrimage, has changed into a rod. He gave you all things, and you used His gifts to glorify the flesh. Now in His infinite love has He sent trouble----"

"I've brought that upon myself."

"For your amendment it was permitted that you should do so. Out of your pleasant vices have you made whips to lash yourself. The wages of sin is death; you have sinned, and the wages--oh, Leah, Leah, bitterly cruel as it may seem to you, I rejoice that the wages should be so paid."

"You are a Job's comforter, I must say," said the Duchess, sullenly.

"Because I can see how this tribulation of the flesh can save your soul alive. God might have struck you dead in your wickedness, and with justice, for your wilful sin. Instead of doing so, He has given you a lingering disease, that you should be brought to acknowledge His power and also have time to repent."

"There is nothing to repent of."

"Shame! shame! Even from a worldly point of view you have sinned grossly; how much blacker, then, are your deeds in God's sight! But they can be made white; the past can be wiped out by sincere sorrow."

Leah twisted her hands above her head with a cry of impotent rage. "How can I repent, when I do not even feel sorry?"

"You will not ask Christ to help you. Repentance is a gift, as is Faith. He will give both, and His undying Love, if you will but confess your sin."

"I have done so--to you."

"Who am powerless. Confess it to Christ; weep as did Mary at His wounded feet. Hard as is your heart, He will melt it; soiled as is your soul, He will cleanse it. Now--now, when human aid is vain, now is the appointed time. Repent and be saved!"

"If I try to, will He--will He cure met"

"That question I cannot, dare not answer. His mercy is infinite."

"You say that to me, knowing what I suffer."

"I say it to you who suffer. In no other way could the Spirit have brought you to the mercy-seat."

"He has not brought me now," she persisted obstinately.

Lionel fell on his knees and caught her restless hands.

"Oh, your poor, sinful soul, for which Christ died!" he cried passionately; "to whom can you go but to God? Doctors cannot cure you; He can, if it be His will. He may even make your flesh clean."

"Ah! And that question you declined to answer a minute or two back. Besides, you denied that miracles could take place."

"I did not. No one ever came in vain to our Blessed Lord, when He walked the earth some two thousand years ago. As was His power then, so is it now. He loved in those days, He loves now. Sitting on God's right hand, He is ready to succour the vilest. His arm is not shortened, His pity is not exhausted. In mercy He may even cure you of this dreadful disease, as He cured the afflicted man we read of. Only acknowledge that God is mightier than you are; only bow to the rod, only admit your sin, only cry for pardon."

"If He will cure me----" she began, wavering.

"That you must leave to His love and wisdom. Cure you He may; permit you to suffer, He may see fit. But save your soul, He can. That much I can swear to."

"I want this horrible thing cured," she cried passionately.

"To continue in your sins? To soil your soul anew?"

"No! no! If I repent----"

"Repentance includes submission. God may not see fit to cure you; it may be your punishment--and I think it is--to bear this woeful cross, which if rightly borne may lead you to the light of lights. The flesh! The flesh! You but think of the flesh, of the passing world, of the vanities of life, of the enjoyment of the senses. From these things God would lead you away to contemplate spiritual realities, and the appointed path has been made known. Bear your cross--oh, my dear, bear your cross, and endure to the end that you may be saved. Terrible as it may seem, this evil, whence good will arise, has removed you from temptation. If you live secluded----"

"Dying piecemeal," she cried, in a frenzy of anger, and wrenched away her hands. "No, no; I will not live. I will die--die. At least I can do that."

"As did Judas! Leah, if you cannot bear your punishment in the flesh, how will you endure it in the spirit? Live for Christ, and what matters the world?"

"Everything! everything! I know what I am; I do not know what I may be. Here--in this tangible world--we are safe--safe!"

"From God? Can you say that, when His hand has struck you down? I tell you, poor sinner, that thus does He show His mercy. As is your crime, so must be your punishment. But Christ can pardon your iniquities, and Christ will, if you only plead for mercy and for grace."

Leah rose, crimson with rage. "You'll drive me mad. I don't want your spiritual life, your next world of shadows and moonshine. Give me life--life--life!"

The cry of the flesh was so insistent, so futile, so blind in its desire, that Lionel shuddered. Still on his knees, he began a fervent prayer. The miserable woman walked rebelliously up and down the room, fighting against the conviction now slowly being driven home to her understanding, that He whom she had mocked and defied was indeed the Most High God. But she still fought against a submission she knew well would have to be made. Beg for mercy she would not: her heart could not feel, her intelligence could not grasp. But, somehow, she knew. A dreadful thing had reduced her to impotence, and the ego could not battle against the Something it had hitherto flouted, but now furiously admitted might exist.

There remained but one thing to do, but one dark way to take. Do it and take it she would. But Lionel more than suspected her intention. Lionel would thwart her, and she would be compelled to live--live on, an object of disgust and pity. "No! no!" was her inward cry, as the imploring voice of the vicar rose and fell, and died away in a last tremulous Amen. For the last time, therefore, did she set her wits to plot for the ego.

"Lionel," said she, hesitatingly, "will you send for Jim?"

The vicar's face lighted up. He saw in this request what she meant him to see, a sign of yielding. "You will let me tell him?"

Leah nodded. "There is a doctor in Vienna," she whispered, inventing recklessly with the cunning of one driven to bay; "he has found out a cure, I hear. If Jim will take me over----"

"I'll telegraph to Hengist Castle at once," cried Kaimes, making for the door impetuously.

"And come back to dinner," said she, following, "I can't pass the evening alone."

"I shall come."

"But you won't frighten me any more with this religious talk?"

Lionel pressed her hand sadly. "I have done what I could, Leah. Only the Holy Spirit can bring home conviction to your heart. Try and pray."

"Yes," assented the Duchess, submissively; "it is all that is left."

"Then the better part, which cannot be taken away, is left."

He went away quite deceived, since she had suggested the Viennese physician so calmly. He thought that she still hoped desperately, and for all he knew the hope might be fulfilled, seeing the present-day resources of science. Certainly he never dreamed how she had hoodwinked him, and so sped on his errand of mercy, leaving behind him a woman too broken to exult in the success of her final piece of trickery.

It was all over. Man could do nothing; God would do nothing. As Demetrius had been smitten for the crime she had induced him to commit, so was she being punished for the evil she had called into being. Lionel had talked nonsense, of course; but he left behind him a feeling in her mind that the God he worshipped did exist. How the belief had come into her heart, she could not say; but it was certainly there. Try as she might, with all the strength of her brilliant intellect, she knew that never again could she be an atheist. God existed to her comprehension at last. But the newly-conceived Deity was not the Father of love and light. Rather did He appear an omnipotent tyrant, who had driven her to bad courses by giving her tastes she was unable to satisfy, and who now punished her for acting as the nature He had given her dictated. She was like a mouse in the claws of a cat, and could no more escape than could the tormented little beast. Only to the height of acknowledging that Something much stronger than herself existed could she rise; and her submission was as that of Caliban to Prospero. Wrenched violently from the egotistic wrappings of her soul, she--the true self, the immortal spirit--stood naked and shamed, yet defiant. She submitted, because only submission was left. But all her flesh shouted furiously against its victor.

Then, again, as the tormented soul strove to overcome the lower material self, did she recall Lionel's words. God was love, he declared, and in love had God broken her shield of self, snapped her sword of desire. Certainly, now that this world could do nothing for her, she would be forced to seek the other. There she might learn how to rise from darkness into light. That the spiritual existed she was now reluctantly convinced; that a study of its meaning would bring her peace she could not be certain. Of course, it was early days yet. She had gained a great step by the admission that God reigned, even though He had proved it to her so cruelly. It might be that by endless striving she would learn something of His love before Death ended her intolerable sufferings. God ordered her to fly; was it worth while to trust to Him for wings?

The struggle of the soul wavering between hell and heaven might have ended in the victory of the latter, and Leah might have consented with bitter tears to bear the cross laid upon her shrinking shoulders. But while wearily pacing the room a chance glance showed her in the mirror that beauty of which she had been, and was, so proud. Leaning her arms on the mantelpiece, she examined every detail lovingly and long. Could she bear to see that gradually disappear? Could she accept life as a Thing and not as a Being? Those blue eyes would grow dull and animal; that glorious hair would drop off; that complexion of cream and roses would--would---- Ugh! ugh!

"No! no! no!" The rebellious cry of the flesh ascended to the stars. "It must never be--never."

All that she knew herself to be revolted against the slow wasting agony that would most surely come, to reduce that splendour of her beautiful body to the dust, dishonoured and shamed. To save herself from such infamy it but needed an overdose of chloral. Then in the pride of her loveliness she would pass away painlessly, without disfigurement, triumphant in a minor degree, at least. With all the indomitable strength of a will that had been only thwarted by Him who had created that will, did she resolve to snatch this one poor laurel-leaf from the Almighty Victor. Turning from the mirror, she felt that her mind was steeled, that Self was not entirely defeated. After all, her unconquerable will would win.

"To-night," she whispered to her shivering soul, "when I go to bed. An overdose of chloral, and then, when I awaken----" She stopped, with the chills of death at her heart. "Oh," was her despairing admission; "You are the stronger!"

It was the cry of the flesh making sullen submission. In vain did the soul piteously beg that its tabernacle might yet hold it a little while, for the purging of its sin. The flesh would not hear. Beaten, conquered, shamed, tormented, its petty triumph could yet be obtained in this hour of defeat. And the terrified soul, sobbing unheeded, waited for the rapidly approaching hour which would send it forth disembodied--whither?